What’s a Brain For? A Moving Story

Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, PhD, is fascinated by how the brain controls our every movement. The ease with which humans move our arms, our eyes, even our lips when we speak masks the true complexity of the control. While computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, no computer can yet control a robot to manipulate a chess piece with the dexterity of a six-year-old child. Join Dr. Wolpert as he discusses what makes control so hard, especially in the face of incomplete or rapidly changing information about the world.

This conversation will be moderated by Shreya Saxena, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute.